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I mind as if it were yesterday my first sight of the man. Little I knew at the time how big the moment was with destiny, or how often that face seen in the fitful moonlight would haunt my sleep and disturb my waking hours.

— John Buchan Prester John (1910)

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Fate

More quotes by John Buchan

Wise men never grow up; indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.

A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906)

The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.

Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.

Montrose and Leadership (1930)

I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.

Canadian Occasions (1940)

We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

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One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Daniel Webster

We may not have chosen the time, but the time has chosen us.

John Lewis

Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.

William Jennings Bryan

“Destiny,” said John. “The ghastliest word a man can speak.”

Poul Anderson The Corridors of Time (1965)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Buchan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.